


They Can Break My Body, They Can Crack My Soul, But My Mind...That's Already Scarred

by AdriannakiBerlets



Series: Undertale Stories Based on Other's Aus [1]
Category: Deeper Down - Undertale AU by Zeragii, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Deeper Down (Zeragii), Enemies to Friends, Feels, Flashbacks, Friendship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Mental Breakdown, Oneshot, Poor Sans (Undertale), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pretty Much Useless Frisk, Reformed Flowey, Sans (Undertale) Needs a Hug, Soul Abuse, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 20:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17270750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdriannakiBerlets/pseuds/AdriannakiBerlets
Summary: (My little contribution to the amazing comic world of Zeragii's Undertale Fancomic "Deeper Down") >>>>http://gettingdeeperdownwithundertale.blogspot.com/<<<< READ it. Like, seriously; read it.This oneshot is sort of an alternate scene, I suppose. It doesn't end the way the scene in DeeperDown does, but it's close."It was like being submerged in the murky depths of an endless sea,  consumed by the very presence of evil from which no escape was possible. The darkness filled with red. With pain. With a terrible, terrible fear.Sans couldn't breathe...And in a moment, that wouldn't matter."





	They Can Break My Body, They Can Crack My Soul, But My Mind...That's Already Scarred

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zeragii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeragii/gifts).



Even as Sans slipped away, he knew it was all an illusion. Those vines, thick and wriggling, weaving through his ribs, they were nothing more than a creeping memory. The strain on his arms, pulled far above his head, their ache, their throbbing - it wasn't real. And yet, as the deep, multi-layered voice of his tormentor thundered through his body, through his soul, through his mind, Sans could not convince himself that what he was seeing and feeling was fake. It was like being submerged in the murky depths of an endless sea, consumed by the very presence of evil from which no escape was possible. The darkness filled with red. With pain. With a terrible, terrible fear. Sans couldn't breathe...

And in a moment, that wouldn't matter.

"LET US SEE HOW FUNNY YOU ARE WITH A CRACK DOWN THE CENTER OF YOUR SOUL!"

"h-hn..."

Sans's terror was suddenly overwhelmed by disgust and tingling wrongness as something slowly slunk up to entwine around his soul. The touch conveyed so many things; a deep, burning hatred and a churning, prodding curiosity that far surpassed even his own greatest emotions or passions. The thin vine caressed his soul, like the acid trail of a unwanted finger, slithering its way up the vessel of his being from bell to tip. The fiber of the plant caught on the pre-existing cracks that littered the organ's surface, each slight tug sending agony through its owner. Sans's chest heaved, tears forming in his sockets without permission; but he remained silent. No  amount of begging would save him. It was only him and this demon; Sans had already given up.

The Forgotten's expression was cruel and gleeful, even as it peered out through its borrowed set of eyes. All that was Flowey, was gone, leaving only a many tendril-ed puppet, pulling and stretching Sans taught, and invading that which was most sacred among monsters.

The vine around his soul was now fully coiled, like a green viper ready to strike. It remained there a moment, allowing Sans to properly feel its presence, to urge the skeleton to stare up with wide, pleading eyes into the petaled face of the being that held him captive. 

And then it began to squeeze.

"hnn!"

Sans jolted, eye lights becoming pricks of hazed and unfocused light as his mind tore between the agonizing torture and the temptation to let reality simply slip away. His broken wrists clenched in their faunic bindings, back arching and shaking legs scrabbling for purchase against a floor that was only just barely out of his reach. He felt the pressure on his soul, felt how the strain began painfully widening the fractures that resided there. His soul warped and shuddered, trying to slip past the iron hold like a fish from a net, but in the end there was no way for it to find itself free. It began to truly split, just as the demon had vowed. It began to crumble, pieces of his essence powdering away to dust - he could feel it trickling down past his heaving ribs, some of it settling in the crest of his pelvis. With a final constricting motion, Sans's soul shattered in a burst of glass-like fragments, the skeleton experiencing an instant white out - a sharp disconnect that stole his breath and sank his mind.

"YOU CANNOT ESCAPE."

No. No, he couldn't. Not even death could save him from this. His soul was shattered, and yet he remained. The Forgotten was in his mind, tearing down his walls, ripping out his dwindling hope; choking him; abusing him. The agony wouldn't leave. What if it never left? What if it never left?!

"YOU CANNOT ESCAPE."

This was hell.

He would never get out.

_i cannot...escape..._

* * *

 

"Come on, come on! Snap out of it!" Flowey hissed in panic. He shifted forward and back on his stem, trying to avoid Sans's squirming movements. It was proving to be very difficult, what with the skeleton constantly shrinking back from some force only he could see; though Flowey could easily guess. "Frisk! Frisk, wake up and help me!"

Honestly, the flower could hardly believe the human child had not woken up already. Huddled against Sans's side, Flowey would have expected Frisk to rouse easily, especially with the air filled with harsh, desperate pants and the scrape of trembling bone against cobblestone street. The alley lit by Sans's wildly pulsing soul, filling their New Home surroundings in an eerie cyan glow.

At Flowey's shout, Frisk finally awoke with a start, small eyes widening as she pushed herself back from Sans's shuddering form. He was clawing at his chest now, his breaths strained to the point of hyperventilation as he stared straight ahead, uncomprehending of anything other than the prison of his own mind. Frisk gasped, reaching out to her friend, only for him to flinch back with a pained, frightened cry. Frisk recoiled, tears forming as she curled into herself at his rejection.

"What are you doing?!" Flowey shouted in disbelief. "Shake him! Wake him up!" Frisk merely started to cry, her expression helpless. Flowey growled in frustration, realizing he was asking too much from the six year old. He was little older, in actuality, but he had lived far longer in retrospect. Sans, the only adult among the three of them, was down. Frisk was too upset to be of any use.

That left Flowey in control.

And he wasn't about to let that moment pass.

"Sorry, Trashbag," he muttered apologetically, musing over the fragile friendship he and the skeleton had only just established. "But this is going to be kinda rough..."

Without wasting a second more, Flowey reached out with a handful of vines, moving swiftly to capture the struggling monster before him. Sans reacted exactly how anyone in his state and situation would react, by thrashing harder. Flowey tightened his hold, standing firm as he bound Sans's legs and arms, all separately, in his vines with deadly skill. His dexterity was impressive on a good day; fueled by worry and stubborn insistence, he was able to wrestle the squirming skeleton softly to the ground. Sans bucked and arched into his new restraints, panic at being confined heightening his hysterical incline. Breaths became gasps became chokes. He wasn't breathing right. The stupid idiot was going to suffocate himself over something that wasn't even _real_. 

Some deep, recovering part of Flowey - no, Asriel - felt guilty, blaming himself for the other's state. If he hadn't brought up the Forgotten, or what had transpired in the Hall, Sans would still be himself. His usual, punny, annoyingly lazy self. Looking at Sans now, Flowey knew this was a monster on the brink of breaking completely. Sans was a monster who had broken too many times and was in danger of doing so one, final time.

Flowey, somehow, could almost relate.

"Shhh....Shhhh, Sans, hey...Calm down." The Flowey of before would never have cared about the skeleton's agony. The Flowey of befor would have chuckled and slithered closer to watch the fear flicker in Sans's eye lights. The Flowey of before would have added to the torture, driven Sans to insanity or further.

But Flowey was new.

Flowey was not what he had been.

And Sans and him were allies now.

Maybe even friends, with time.

.

.

.

.

Flowey wasn't going to let Sans break again.

**Author's Note:**

> There we go. Just a short little thing. Would have made it longer, but it's super late and I'm tired.


End file.
